by Lyndon Hardy
Alodar propped himself up on one elbow, grimacing at the pounding the motion started in his head. “Then what did the apothecary learn?” he asked weakly. “I think my sorcery will not be the means by which we deal with the nomads.”
“Their camp is to the north, beyond the rocky point,” Aeriel said. “Their group is a small one; their men number no more than ours. They plunder as much as they hunt. On the morrow they will move southwards, looking for shipwrecked booty from the storm. We must either retreat before them or make the conditions of confrontation our own choosing. From the way the captive related their history, a civilized parlay is out of the question.”
“Are they the only ones with whom we can deal?” Alodar asked.
“No, there are others scattered throughout the north. The larger tribes are in the hills to the west, seeking the game that winter drives down from the higher peaks. But enough of that. Let the other suitors carry forth the queen’s banner for awhile. From the looks of your face, you need more rest. I can fetch you a meal, as well.”
Alodar slowly shook his head. “Had I succeeded, there would have been no denying my primacy,” he groaned. “As it is, now I must strive all the harder not to loose more ground.”
“Kelric warned that it takes more than a week for a misspinning to fade,” Aeriel replied. “Are you truly ready to contest again after a single day?”
Alodar tried to push himself to a sitting position, but his arm trembled with the effort, and he collapsed back to the ground. “Perhaps just a little while longer to gather my strength,” he said.
“And the meal?” Aeriel asked.
Alodar clutched his stomach. “Food I can still do without.” He looked into her face filled with concern. “But your presence would be a comfort indeed.”
Aeriel smiled, sat down beside Alodar, and placed her hand lightly on his shoulder. Alodar managed to smile back and then turned his attention to the loud voices around the firepit.
“Sweetbalm on their prowess!” Feston said, pounding a fist into an open palm. “We still outnumber them by one or two. If we strike at dusk, surprise will carry the day. And it is only force that these barbarians respect. They will submit to us no other way.”
“You speak with the imprecision of a neophyte,” Duncan shot back. “Suppose we were to take their camp. What would we have when we were done? Half of our men slain and half of theirs. Our numbers would be no greater than what we have now. And we would have traded ten stout hearts for an equal number who will serve only with a sharp blade at their backs. Let us retreat south, I say, as best we can. Even if they catch up, my sphere will protect the queen from harm.”
“A fight in their camp would not be as bad as all that,” Basil said, “if we could fell the chieftain with one of the first blows. According to our captive, his hold on the group is slight. He bullied them to rob anyone who ventured this way, regardless of the profit in it. Why, their treasure he bragged of was no more than some alchemist’s rotting samples they had plundered a week ago. You look with scorn at what I have done with a barbarian. But apparently that was nothing compared to what this chieftain delights in whenever a civilized man falls into his clutches. If we can kill the leader, then the rest just might lay down their arms and follow the victors.”
“Such a blow will not be swung easily,” Grengor said quietly. “These nomads are a suspicious lot. They would insist we drop our arms before entering camp. And if we rushed them, the leader would be in the center. We would have to hack through them all to approach him.” He stopped and rubbed his chin. “It would take a berserker to slash through the defense—a berserker or perhaps someone like Feston’s guard whom we saw on the royal barge. His own safety concerned him not. Indeed, he took more than one mortal wound without even flinching.”
“More sorcery,” Duncan sneered. “That plan is no better than any other.” He looked at Kelric, propped up against a rock a little distance away, his arms sagging limply at his sides, and then over to Alodar, barely managing to hold his head off the ground. “One nearly dead and the other unable to complete an enchantment. I say that the key to our dilemma somehow involves the use of my sphere and that we should not act until we discover it.”
“Then what is your proposal, Duncan?” Vendora asked. “If we cannot gain by arms or guile, how does your magic assemble the army that I need?”
Duncan looked back at the queen and then dipped his head in silence. For a long moment, Grengor and the suitors stood shuffling their feet in the sand, saying nothing. Finally Vendora turned to two other marines standing further back. “Bring me Kelric,” she said.
The two men fetched the sorcerer. With a hand under each arm, they brought him to stand before the queen. Vendora looked at the sagging form and spoke softly. “Master Kelric,” she said, “I am sorry that your loyalty to the court has brought you such distress. But with the conditions being as they are, can one final enchantment make any difference?”
“You are so tactful with your words, my fair lady,” Kelric wheezed without bothering to raise his head from his chest. “Since my hours seem numbered and no one cares how many remain, why not one final gesture for the glory of Procolon, you say.” He nodded his head back and forth. “There are not enough jewels in Basil’s coffers to make me want to attempt it.”
A flicker of irritation crossed Vendora’s face, and then she pressed her lips in thought. After a long moment, she reached forward and touched Kelric’s arm. Frowning with the effort, she bent over and brushed her mouth against his cheek. “I am not so removed from the gossip of the palace that I do not know for what reasons you ply your craft,” she said. “We have ignored your plight since we landed, one and all, it is true. But if you perform this labor in my cause, then your nurse and comforter shall be none other than the queen of Procolon.”
Kelric raised his head and looked at Vendora through half open eyes. “And if that comfort requires a caress or two or perhaps even a lack of haste to resmooth a gown blown above the knee by the wind?” he said.
“We shall see later what it entails. Perform for me what I require and you will be appropriately rewarded.”
“You are no different from the lowest chambermaid,” Kelric said. “Full of vague promises that must be wrenched out of you, once the deed is done.”
Vendora drew erect and placed her hands on her hips. “There are two important differences, sorcerer. First, I am none less than the queen. And second, even if I were not…” She left the sentence unfinished and curved her lips into a slight smile.
Kelric’s eyes widened as he drank in Vendora’s beauty. “But, my fair lady,” he said, “in refusing an enchantment before, my words have been true. With full health I would fail; now even if I desired it as nothing else, the result would be the same.”
Alodar frowned in concentration as he sensed the opportunity. The suitor that resolved the course of action would gain, relative to the others. Despite how he felt, he must enter the discussion. He ignored the weakness and pushed himself up.
He looked to his side and saw the top of the sphere poking out of the sand from where he had dropped it. He scooped it up and slowly climbed to his feet, panting rapidly. For a moment he gently swayed back and forth, waiting for the throbbing to quiet and the flashes of light to clear from his eyes.
“But with the sorcerer’s eye, would not the effort for enchantment of only one be greatly reduced?” he called out. “And with a willing subject, even less required.”
All eyes turned to Alodar as he weaved across the beach and finally thrust the eye into Kelric’s hand. “Use it,” he said. “It will be some time before I will be of full service to the fair lady.”
Kelric looked down at the translucent orb, up to Alodar, and then back to the queen. He ran his eyes over her a second time and then scratched his side. For a long moment, he was silent. “Oh, it just might work,” he conceded at last. “Yes, with the help of the eye. I learned the charm in my youth and thought I never would have cause to use it
. And for the attention of the fair lady against expiring alone, I may as well try.”
“Then there remains only the matter of the subject,” Vendora said, looking quickly around the circle. “Who among you will seize the opportunity for greater glory?”
Heads dropped as she scanned the group. As if she were a sorceress herself, the circle of men avoided her eyes. A minute passed and no one moved.
“Men of great bravery and pledged to the fair lady!” Kelric laughed. “And not one as brave as an old man with insufficient strength to draw a sword.”
“My life for the crown of Procolon I have always sworn,” Grengor responded quietly. “I do so still. But that life I have pledged to give in honor in battle, not smothered and stolen away by the foulness of sorcery.”
“But it seems the only way,” Alodar said. “Without the enchantment, we will not bend this first small band to our side.”
“Then let it be you, suitor and savior of the queen,” Duncan sneered. “You have the righteous air of the pure hero of the saga. If you are indeed true to your ideals, then it is you who should do the deed.”
Vendora turned to Alodar and her lips curved into a small smile. “It seems your boasts with sorcery far exceeded your craft, Alodar,” she said. “How soon then will it be before you can swing a blade and carry an equal load with the rest?”
Alodar licked his lips and held himself steady as he returned the gaze of the queen. He heard Aeriel rush to his side but nodded before she could speak. “It is as Kelric states, my fair lady,” he replied, “a question of bravery. When you weigh the virtues of your suitors, remember who spoke when all the others remained silent.”
The first recitation had been long. Alodar sagged with weakness as he sat in front of Kelric, who still held the small sphere at eye level. He looked from the motionless old sorcerer, mumbling before him, to the ocean beyond. In the low afternoon sun, he could see the sail of the longboat still fluttering above high tide. He looked to the south, over the unending beach that finally blurred out in the distance. He studied the hills to the north that curved to the surf, cutting off his view.
Then with a sudden shock, Alodar felt his gaze wrenched in the direction of the sphere. Instinct took over; he tried to draw his head away or raise an arm, but his muscles would not respond. With great effort, he squinted his eyes to thin slits, resolved to catch only a glimpse of what Kelric held in his hand and then dart away. But he could only blink once, then stare directly into the globe.
A single eye, now fully open, glowed back at him, its pupil golden yellow and dilated with power. Around the white perfectly spaced black lashes stood tensely erect, and tiny crackles of blue flame darted from one hair to the next. The eye floated free in the confines of the sphere, circled with but a hint of the palest flesh. In fascination, Alodar examined the orb which confronted him, feeling that he must let no part go unstudied or neglected. Even from the distance, he could somehow tell that the lashes curved inward in the same precise arcs; not a single vein marked the perfect whiteness in which the pupil swam.
With a last shudder, he stared straight at the pupil and felt a sudden dizziness as the world about him swept away. The sea, the hills, the men who stood with faces guarded, one by one they dimmed and were gone. Alodar lashed his mind out in blackness. He groped for the fabric of his existence but felt it dissolve. The other suitors, the craftmasters, Vendora, Aeriel—visions of them warped before him and slid away into the blackness. And Alodar, Alodar the suitor, the neophyte magician, the alchemist’s apprentice, the journeyman thaumaturge, the one who quested for the fair lady—like the layers of an onion, his self-images were peeled off and crumbled away. Shell after shell faded into oblivion. As the innermost core was bared and dissolved with the rest, Alodar screamed in anguish and then was quiet.
Now there was only the eye and the eye was everything. The blackness was complete; he could not see. The silence was complete; he could not hear. He was composed of nothingness; he could not feel. But the eye was there. The eye would provide; the eye would guide him. What was proper for him to see, he would be shown. What was proper to hear, he would hear. What was proper for him to feel, he would feel.
Gradually and gently, he began to perceive. At first it was only a whisper and, because there was nothing else, he dwelt upon it; the murmur grew into a hiss of surf on sand. As it did, the darkness lifted; the sun shone behind him, lighting a gentle sea, broken only by a single mast standing above the tide. The sea ran upon a beach, a beach that stretched off in the distance to the south and butted against hard granite hills to the north.
He felt the wind course about him, heard the call of gulls above the beach. The scene before him shimmered for an instant. Then, where there had been no one, a tired old man was sitting in the sand. Without asking, Alodar knew the man was Kelric the sorcerer. He heard a cough behind. Without turning, he knew of the marines and the men of the court of Procolon.
He watched the sorcerer without feeling. And as he waited, he felt himself take form, felt the layers build upon the seed that sprang into being as he watched. He was Alodar, Alodar the journeyman thaumaturge, the alchemist’s apprentice, and the neophyte magician. Feeling coursed through his limbs. He was Alodar the fighter and he felt a restlessness welling up in him, to take form and guide him to action. He felt a desire to strike, to bring forth blood, to hack until he could hack no more. And it felt right. He was Alodar and this was his purpose for being.
He rose to his feet, eyes still on the sorcerer who somehow held his attention. Behind the huddled form he saw a woman, looking away, walking slowly along the beach. She was beautiful, cheeks aglow, crimson hair flowing behind as the waves rolled up to touch her bare feet.
In a flash he was Alodar the suitor as well as the fighter. As he looked at the woman, something began to matter greatly. It bubbled up beside the desire to fight and it grew angular and sharp and sawed at his mind for attention. But the lust for blood flamed higher, and the edges of the other desire shrank beside it. The sharpness rounded and it subsided. She was only Aeriel, a lady of the court. He was Alodar the journeyman thaumaturge, the alchemist’s apprentice, the neophyte magician—but most of all, Alodar the warrior.
The feeling exploded within him and he drew his sword with a mighty flourish and a piercing scream. Without waiting for the others, he turned and raced out of the camp, across the sand, and to the fight, to the blood that beckoned him from the hills to the north.
Like a machine of the thaumaturges, Alodar stomped forward with an even cadence up and over the low dunes, across the gullies that emptied to the sea, striding evenly, breathing evenly, not pausing to check his direction or how far he had gone.
He was aware of the others scurrying behind, trying to keep pace. Once, after an hour, two of the marines raced by carrying the sorcerer between them on a makeshift stretcher. The old man raised himself shakily on one arm as they came alongside and looked Alodar deeply in the eyes. Alodar paid him no heed. After a moment, Kelric signaled that all was well. His bearers dropped back to join the throng behind.
The sun sank towards the west, casting the men’s shadows before them as they finally climbed through a cut in the hills. At the narrow pass, Alodar felt a sudden compulsion to pause. He waited for the rest to draw up beside him and look down to a cove beyond.
They saw a narrow finger of the sea crook inland in the midst of a scattering of small campfires. Around each, two or three men sprawled in relaxation, talking, picking fleas from each other, and gnawing on the remains of the evening meal. Nearest the inlet, one roared with laughter, holding high a silver cup and wiping the back of his hand on a woolly vest. On the peninsula of land between the bay and the sea, women and children clustered about low-slung tents and hobbled ponies.
“It is as the captive painted it,” Grengor said. “If we hurry we can take them as they eat.”
“Then let us group at the outcropping over there,” another man replied. “With master Alodar rushing out, and
a bit of luck, he will have the chieftain down just as we show ourselves and charge.”
Alodar heard grunts of agreement, and the desire to rest quickly passed. The bloodthirst rose again, and he jerked at the hilt of his sword. He struck out in the lead down the hillside, scrambling over the rocks and just barely remaining behind cover. The urgency boiled higher, and his nostrils flared in anticipation. The rest followed behind as he descended the irregular trail.
Halfway down, his view suddenly blurred. As he lurched around a large boulder, he did not see the cove, but more of the hills leading to higher mountains in the distance. In the very center, a monolith of cold granite soared into the sky. Alodar stopped and blinked in confusion. He was Alodar the bloodspiller, with a purpose soon to be fulfilled. There was no room in his existence for anything but his mission.
But the spire compelled, and he felt himself drawn forward. He seemed to skim over the rough ground. Like a tiny leaf blown by the wind, he hurled to the tower. At its base, his compulsion grew, and he launched himself up the side. Hand over hand, as rapidly as he seemed able, he climbed into the sky, drawing nearer to whatever called him. In an instant he neared the peak and stopped to stare at what was before his eyes. The stone was smooth, with no more grips to pull him higher; but directly in front, protruding from the rock, was the tarnished surface of an ancient bracelet.
As Alodar reached forward to pull it from the wall, the vision wavered and blurred. He felt the presence of the eye expand in his mind, growing, consuming, absorbing into blackness the sights about him. The scene flashed away and he looked down into a cove populated by a small tribe of barbarians. He blinked again, but the image remained firm.
He resumed his hurried descent, untroubled by what he had seen and intent only on what he was meant to do. Down the hillside the party went, until at last they stood poised at the outcropping, barely fifty yards from the small camp at the water’s edge. With perfect calmness, Alodar marched out from the hiding place and headed straight for the barbarians, his hand on the hilt of his sword and his gaze steady.
